My Re-Read Has Arrived… at Path of Daggers. BLEH.

[WoTwasThat]

Very much enjoying my re-read up through Crown of Swords. Also, my apologies for ever disparaging Crown. Things are definitely slowing down a lot, and there’s the somewhat anticlimactic and vague ending to Sammael, but overall it’s an ok book. Certainly I should not have lumped it in with the Final Four RJ books.

 

Which brings me to Daggers. Sigh. I’m ten chapters in. This is soooo not good. The drop off is significant. So far I’ve been treated to the tedious hen-scratching between the Aes Sedai, the Kin, and the Sea Folk Windfinders. RJ has introduced so many dang women’s names at this point that I’m fresh into my re-read and still can’t even stay close to keeping track. Elayne and Nynaeve somehow made the dumbest “bargain” I’ve ever heard of - why in the heck would they ever have had to offer the Sea Folk anything other than the Bowl itself for their help??? The Bowl of the Winds storyline comes to a close - actually much shorter than I remember - only to be immediately replaced with Andoran Succession (oh my head). And now we’re getting the Perrin and Faile show and I know that’s just gettin’ started. And as if I didn’t have enough women’s names to track we get the idiotic Cha Faile.

 

God this book. This book you guys. This is where the slog truly starts.

[Loose Theremin]

28 minutes ago, WoTwasThat said:

Very much enjoying my re-read up through Crown of Swords. Also, my apologies for ever disparaging Crown. Things are definitely slowing down a lot, and there’s the somewhat anticlimactic and vague ending to Sammael, but overall it’s an ok book. Certainly I should not have lumped it in with the Final Four RJ books.

 

Which brings me to Daggers. Sigh. I’m ten chapters in. This is soooo not good. The drop off is significant. So far I’ve been treated to the tedious hen-scratching between the Aes Sedai, the Kin, and the Sea Folk Windfinders. RJ has introduced so many dang women’s names at this point that I’m fresh into my re-read and still can’t even stay close to keeping track. Elayne and Nynaeve somehow made the dumbest “bargain” I’ve ever heard of - why in the heck would they ever have had to offer the Sea Folk anything other than the Bowl itself for their help??? The Bowl of the Winds storyline comes to a close - actually much shorter than I remember - only to be immediately replaced with Andoran Succession (oh my head). And now we’re getting the Perrin and Faile show and I know that’s just gettin’ started. And as if I didn’t have enough women’s names to track we get the idiotic Cha Faile.

 

God this book. This book you guys. This is where the slog truly starts.

 

Yes Path of Doggers is mostly filler. Things are happening but nothing of consequence apart from using the Bowl of the Winds to fix the weather. Otherwise it's just a lot of wheels spinning without going anywhere.

[Irvyne]

I'm there as well.

I started a series re-read when Season 1 of the show first aired, and I'm now ALMOST finished with Path of Daggers.

And yeah. It's rough.

Like, it's so boring. Barely anything happens at all. It's almost entirely people just standing around either talking, or thinking about what the other characters are wearing or what expressions they have on their faces.

If the TV show ever reached this part of the story, I feel like they could completely remove this book, and nothing of consequence would be lost.

Which is a shame, because this is the book I got signed by Robert Jordan. So it's a bit special to me in that regard. 😉

But having Books 5, 6 and 7 get progressively slower, and then being hit with this one, where nothing really happens... It's a slog all right.

[Loose Theremin]

12 hours ago, Irvyne said:

I'm there as well.

I started a series re-read when Season 1 of the show first aired, and I'm now ALMOST finished with Path of Daggers.

And yeah. It's rough.

Like, it's so boring. Barely anything happens at all. It's almost entirely people just standing around either talking, or thinking about what the other characters are wearing or what expressions they have on their faces.

If the TV show ever reached this part of the story, I feel like they could completely remove this book, and nothing of consequence would be lost.

Which is a shame, because this is the book I got signed by Robert Jordan. So it's a bit special to me in that regard. 😉

But having Books 5, 6 and 7 get progressively slower, and then being hit with this one, where nothing really happens... It's a slog all right.

 

Oh that's interesting ! Robert Jordan signed your copy of Path of Doggers did he. Tell me did you speak with him ? And if so was he showing signs of cognitive decline ? I ask because someone here (who may not be unrelated to the OP) suggested that was the reason for the poorer quality of his later books.

Edited September 27 by Loose Theremin
Revision

[Tenobia si bashere kazadi]

to me Path of daggers was actually worse than crossroads of twilight

[wotfan4472]

On 9/27/2025 at 5:23 AM, Tenobia si bashere kazadi said:

to me Path of daggers was actually worse than crossroads of twilight

The highlight for me was the Rand stuff. All of that was scary to read the first time.

[Asthereal]

I quite liked Path of Daggers. It didn't feel like one whole book though. It felt more like four episodes from the middle of a season of a TV show. But three of those I rather enjoyed. The ending of the Bowl of Winds storyline I thought was fun and one of the stronger starts to a book. In fact I think that should have been part of the payoffs at the end of Crown of Swords. Rand waging war against the SeanChan was also cool, and Egwene's power struggles with the rebel Aes Sedai were interesting. Only the Perrin stuff wasn't all that, but to be fair, that was just setup for a whole storyline. It's just frustrating that Faile is so jealous all the time.

 

All in all, Path for me definitely isn't the weakest. There's a lot to like and quite a bit of action. It's just not a very coherent book. There's no clear beginning, middle and end.

 

Anyway, those are my 0.02$.

Edited September 29 by Asthereal